Comparison

We live in a world of comparisons, where people are compared with one another daily.  Sometimes the comparison comes from others, but I feel it mostley comes from within.   This week I have had a mini break through.  Everyother day Jeffs friends comes over at 6:00 am to workout.  They compete in traiatholons together, therefore they train daily.  I am not the most organized person in the world, so I have a hard time keeping my house clean.  Things are placed randomly around the house and it just seems there are piles of clutter everywhere. This is one of my most embaressing faults I have about myself.  I have tried for 5 years to hide it and convince others that I am a wife that has a perfectly clean house where everything has its perfect place and remains in that place.  Where not a spot of dust exists, everything sparkles and the house smells of warm baked pumkpin pie.  Meals are out on the table at the same time everyday, but always a different creative menu to eat.  After we eat I immediatley clean everything back up until its sparkles again. On top of doing all that, I want so bad to be the mom that has hers kids perfectly dressed, where I can run the errands, do the grocery shopping, pay the bills, plan a fun activity everyday for my girls, do my visiting teaching and church callings without any stress, and be the entertainer where I plan all these fun parties and stuff for friends to get together, and on top of all that have the perfect body for my husband where I can where any swimsuit and look good. . . lol. . . yaah this just isnt happening for me! I have realized this more and more since Jeffs friend has been coming to our house.  At first I kept telling Jeff he cant invite anyone over cause its too messy and they cant see how messy our house can get, then when he convinced me that it is never perfect for anyone to come over if it follows my standards, i decided to stay up all night and into the middle of th night to clean everything, since in the day i am running crazy attending to every need of my sweet girls, but after many sleepless nights, I realized this wasnt going to work either. . . . .
The first time his friend came over and my house looked like a tornado had blown through here, I was humilated, and almost in tears. . . . knowing that his wife is the "dream wife" that is the most organized, cleanliness wife I know. Then the break through started to happen.  I realized that I have been trying so hard to be exactley like all these other wifes that have all the qaulities that I dont.  Suddenly what I have become was not good enough for anyone or even myself.  I have been trying to become an exact copy of "the perfect wife and mom" and in doing so have failed at everything, even the stuff I used to be good at.  How did I let myself become someone who is not happy with herself and who is embarressed to have others see the real me.  


When I was a little girl I was always trying to be the different one.  I wanted to find my own path, dance to my own rythem and be so unique.  I would look for ways I could be different, like dressing different, finding new ways to do things.  I remember a time I was trying to suprise my parents by mowing and fertlilzing the lawn.  But I couldnt figure out how to fertilize and i wanted to be creative, so I got a big cup of fertilizer, and would walk around the yard, scooping out a handful and throwing it up into the sky to let it randomly fall where it wanted to like snow.  I thought this was the best way and that my dad would be proud to know i found a new a different easier way to fertilize.  A week later my lawn was covered in brown spots all over where the fertilizer has fallen in clumps to the ground. 
Another time I tried to mop the floor without having to fill the sink up with mop water.  I squirted dish soap all over the floor, and the took the sprayer from the kitchen sink and just sprayed water all over, so much that the floor looked like a giant bubble bath.  I tried soaking all the water up with the mop but it just wasnt working, water and bubbles were everywhere and i was slipping all over the place.  So i had a plan b, i went to my room, got my swimsuit on, and created a slip and slide on my kitchen floor.  I had so much fun running and sliding on my tummy, back, spinning on my bottom and doing so many water tricks.  Well needless to say a few weeks later we had a new kitchen floor put it, since I had ruined the old one. 
The last example is I was trying to suprise my brother and clean out his fish tank for him.   Normally when he would do it he would put all the fish in tiny little bowls until the aquariam was clean.  Well i felt bad for the fish that they didnt have a big place to swim, so I had a great idea.  I went outside and grabbed my large kid plastic kid pool that was the size of half my kitchen floor.  I filled it up with warm water clear to the top. Then i put all his fish in while i cleaned out the his aquariam.  When the time came for me to put the fish back in I had a problem.  The area was too big for me to catch them and they kept swimming away.  Well after an hour or so my brother came home and to see me still trying to catch his fish in my pool.  He finally caught them all and they were safely returned to the aquariam suffering from stress.  My second obstacle was realizing i couldnt just carry the pool out the sliding glass door and dump the water. . . . What was I thinking???  I spent the rest of the evening  emptying the pool with cooking pots and dumping them in the kitchen sink.. . . a task that I will never repeat again. . . .
But with all these mistakes I made where things didnt turn out exactly how i had hoped or plan for, I didnt give up.  I still was true to who I was, just laughing at the situation and learning my lesson, but trying again to be creative. . . I didnt let me failures discourage me and bring me down.


I dont know if this is making any sense but i have been thinking all night about comparison.  Is it good to compare yourselves to others?  On one hand I think yes because when you see a good quality or trait in someone else that you would like to adapt, like being kinder, having more love, being more organized, I think it is good to have people to look up to and to motivate you to become a better person.  We are a growing changing people who can not remain idle.  We need to be constantly improving and learning and striving for that which is good. But I think the world or the media in the world today has caused us to become so obsessed with not only being a better person, but being the best, better then the average joe. And somewhere in all of that the message has come across that who we are and what we have become is not good enough.  Somewhere it is causing not only myself but millions of others i believe to forget who they really are.  We are loosing are self esteem, we are becoming a more discouraged and unhappy people when we constantly compare ourselves with who we are not and are not satisfied with any form of achievement because we are so quick to find another fault in ourselves where nothing is good enough.  I dont know of this makes sense or not.


I just realized that yes my dream and goal is to become more organized and have a better routine, and that is a good thing, but not to the point where I am hiding out and I wont allow anyone to come over for fear that they will think I am a horrible and disgusting person to have dirty dishes in the sink. . . .it sounds so silly when I say it out loud but we have to learn to accept who we are and find happiness in that with having goals and dreams to reach for and acheive. 
It doesnt mean i can say, oh well i am just a messy person and that is who I am so i will do nothing to change that.  That is not that answer, what I am trying to say is your true friends and family will love you no matter what and if I have a weakness or something I want to be better at , then keep trying and working towards that goal, while accepting the present situation. Hopefully my friends and family can understand that and accept it and if they come over on a day where I am not up to the standard that I want to be, that is okay because they know that I am trying, and one day hopefully sooner then later I will become successful and find a pattern or routine that works.  But until then not to put my life or Jeffs life or my kids life on hold, just keep living and breathing, and growing, and learning, and striving, while appreciating the blessings that already exist in my life and find happiness in all things. 


Okay, so that is me venting and sorting out my thoughts. . . . hopefully all my blogs wont be this long, but i just needed to get that out there. . . .  

last years attempt to blog and this was my only post. . .

Monday, January 4, 2010

So in church last sunday during sunday school we were talking about Gods mission statement, "For behold this is my work and my glory to bring to past the immortality and eternal life of men"  I was thinking about this past year and how hard the Advesary has worked on our family trying to tear it apart. . . . long story short, he wont win.   New years eve I was driving with Jeff and Abby, coming back from Pirate Island and shopping.  Jeff was driving and I was looking at our windshield.  The windsheild wiper on my side was broken so I could only see out through a foggy dirty window with smudges all over, but I looked at Jeffs side and it was complelty clean and sparkled with a clear vision.  I could use so many analogies for this, but the first thing I thought of was how often do we see each other through a blurry window?  To make this thought shorter, cause I could elaborate forever, I thought about Gods Purpose and how we are all children of God.  We are all striving to return to live with him and be an eternal family.  How often are we quick to judge and see eachother through a blurry vision, focusing more on each others weakness  instead of strengths.  How much more effective and good could we do if we only saw eachother as who we really are. . . children of God all stiving to return to live with him.  We all have weakness that we need to learn to overcome and who are we to judge another for their weakness when we have to many of our own.  If we could only help eachother to over come these weaknesses through love and through following the example of our savior.  The advesary could never even get close to succeeding if we center our lives on Christ.  I think one of my new years goal this year is to keep in focus Gods purpose, to follow our saviors example.  Too not see one another through a glass darkley, but rather through Gods eyes. . . .I am so grateful for the gospel and for my family and to know of our purpose here so we can always stay focused on what really matters. . .

the beginning. . . . .

Well here we go. . . . I thought for the start of the new year, I would become a blogger.  However, I think I am going to do this a lot differently then most bloggers.  I am going to post pictures, news feed, ect, but I also wanted a place where I could just write down my thoughts and ideas that I have. . . which I realize is not very interesting to most people, but I am using this blog sight as more of a online journal for me. . . . I like to go back and reflect upon the year and how things have changed.  So here we go. . . . .